U.S. Solar Generation Doubled in 2014, Renewable Output Grew 11%

New federal statistics out this week have shed more light on solar and wind energy’s emerging role in keeping the country’s lights on. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2014 saw non-hydro renewable energy generation increase by 11 percent over the previous year — and solar power led the charge in growth, if not […]

Putin eats babies: lies, damned lies, and psyops

  Google Ngram’s results for “propaganda”. The term seems to have been most popular in the early 1960, to lose interest in the following years. Of course, however, propaganda didn’t disappear – it just went undercover. I distinctly remember one day when I was – maybe – twelve; when my father saw me reading something […]

Anarchy in Rojava: A libertarian revolution in the Middle East

In this sedition, we look at the fierce men and women, who have been fighting the head chopping Islamists of I.S.I.S. to create libertarian commune along the border between Syria, Iraq and Turkey. On the music break we have Kurdish rapper Rezan with “Em Kurdin.” Our guest this week is Chris Dixon, author of “Another […]

Iraq builds up arrears to majors as oil price drops

Iraq is building up debts to the oil companies developing its giant fields, industry sources said, a further sign of how the oil-price drop is putting a squeeze on revenues in OPEC’s second-largest producer. Western oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil are working at Iraq’s southern oilfields under service contracts, which […]

The Real Story Behind The Oil Price Collapse

Many reasons have been provided for the dramatic plunge in the price of oil to about $60 per barrel (nearly half of what it was a year ago): slowing demand due to global economic stagnation; overproduction at shale fields in the United States; the decision of the Saudis and other Middle Eastern OPEC producers to […]

Robert Rapier: Is the U.S. Running Out of Crude Oil Storage?

No, despite the popular narrative that we keep hearing, the U.S is not running out of crude oil storage. Yet there are those who are predicting that oil prices are going to fall to $20 or $30 a barrel, pointing to the crude oil storage numbers and suggesting that we are near maximum capacity and […]

China Restarts its Nuclear Reactor Construction Program

The Bloomberg wire service reports that China has approved start of construction of two new nuclear power plants, the first such approvals since the Fukushima crisis in Japan in 2011. The China State Council inked the go-ahead decision on Feb 17 for two new reactors to be built by China General Nuclear Power at the […]

North America will continue to build market share in global oil market

“Today’s low prices will encourage consumption” Today’s global oil market collapse is eerily reminiscent of the dot com crash of 2000. Like the 1995-99 hype accompanying the rise in internet stocks, over the last several years there has been enormous promotion of the “game changing” unconventional technologies used to develop North American shale and oil […]

US crude stocks grow, likely to continue building

U.S. commercial crude oil stocks rose 4.5 million barrels during the week ended March 6, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed Wednesday. Analysts surveyed by Platts on Monday had expected crude oil stocks to increase 4.2 million barrels week over week. At 448.9 million barrels, inventories pushed further into record-high territory. Crude oil imports […]

If You’re An Oil Worker Who Lives Here, Move!

As crude prices drop back to cycle lows, breaking the back of the stability-meme, we thought a quick reminder of the world’s major energy projects that are completely FUBAR given the current prices, record production, and record inventories… Goldman maps the places “Not To Be”…   and here is Citi’s massive cost curve expectations for […]

Support Al Qaeda to Defeat ISIS

The Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington DC think tank with large influence over U.S. foreign policy, is once again calling on the Obama administration to support Al Qaeda terrorists under the guise of defeating the Islamic State. In an article entitled, Accepting Al Qaeda: The Enemy of the United States’ Enemy, Foreign Affairs writer […]

Turkey Seeks to Replace Ukraine as Energy Hub

Russia says it will stop sending natural gas to Europe through Ukraine and will start sending it through Turkey. Turkey welcomes the decision. For ten years the country has aimed to be a major energy hub, or distribution center. But some critics say Turkey is not prepared to play such a role. Atilla Yesilada is […]

We will need more food

We have all heard the oft-repeated United Nations’ prediction for global population growth of about 9.2 billion people by 2050. And no one expects a reduction in population until after 2100. With more of us humans bustling around the planet, more food will need to be grown on the same, or even less, land. The […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: An Update

A lot has happened to the global oil industry in recent months. First it is important to understand that the concept of “peak oil,” the time when global oil production starts to decline, is alive and well despite the current, and very temporary oil glut. Conventional oil, the kind that comes shooting out of wells […]

The Real (and Troubling) Reason Behind Lower Oil Prices

It isn’t supply and demand, as most people believe I am obsessed with how the top tier of finance has undermined, rather than fueled, the real economy. In part, that’s because of I’m writing a book about the topic, but also because so many market stories I come across seem to support this notion. The […]

The oil price

STRONG demand and tight supply have stoked a rise in the oil price. Last week, it reached more than $60 for Brent (the benchmark price for North Sea oil) and $50 for West Texas Intermediate, the main American price. Last year’s downward slide seems over. Goldman Sachs, a bank which was forecasting oil at $40 […]

Everyone Is Guessing When It Comes To Oil Prices

Predicting and diagnosing the trajectory of oil prices has become something of a cottage industry in the past year. But along with all of the excess crude flowing from the oil patch, there is also an abundance of market indicators that while important, tend to produce a lot of noise that makes any accurate estimate […]

The oil glut and low prices reflect an affordability problem

For a long time, there has been a belief that the decline in oil supply will come by way of high oil prices. Demand will exceed supply. It seems to me that this view is backward–the decline in supply will come through low oil prices. The oil glut we are experiencing now reflects a worldwide […]

Norwegian Crude Oil Reserves And Extraction per 2014

In this post I present actual Norwegian crude oil extraction and status on the development in discoveries and reserves and what this has now resulted in for expectations for future Norwegian crude oil extraction. This post is also an update of an earlier post about Norwegian crude oil reserves and production per 2013. Norwegian crude […]

US Oil Production Could Plunge in Summer

The oil market has been very weak over the past seven months. The price of a WTI contract went down more than 50% from its 2014 peak of $107 per barrel. Part of the reason for this dramatic sell-off is a resurgent US dollar, which is dragging down oil and commodities in general. However, oil […]

Think of Russia as an ordinary petrostate, not an extraordinary superpower

The Kremlin’s motivation in the Ukrainian conflict has split scholars. Is Russia a greedy state ideologically driven to expand or a declining insecure superpower defending itself against NATO? Realist scholars (for example, see these recent pieces by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt) argue that the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict was provoked by NATO expansion into Georgia and […]

The Oil Shock Model with Dispersive Discovery- Simplified

Originally posted at peak oil climate and sustainability Some changes have been made to this post see after the Excel File link.  Below figure 10. The Oil Shock Model was first developed by Webhubbletelescope and is explained in detail in The Oil Conundrum. (Note that this free book takes a while to download as it […]

Chaos: Practice and Applications

The term “chaos” has been popping up a lot lately in the increasingly collapse-prone world in which we find ourselves. Pepe Escobar has even published a book on it. Titled Empire of Chaos, it describes a scenario “where a[n American] plutocracy progressively projects its own internal disintegration upon the whole world.” Escobar’s chaos is tailor-made; […]

ExxonMobil CEO Wrong About “Resilience” of Tight Oil Production

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson is wrong about the resilience of U.S. tight oil production. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported: “…Mr. Tillerson pointed out that the collapse in natural-gas prices similarly had led the number of rigs drilling for that fuel to drop to 280 from north of 1,600 in 2008. Gas output jumped 50% in that time, he […]

The Science of Peak Oil

One of the many barbs often pointed at peak oil proponents is that they are constantly shifting the goal posts. Peak oilers are accused of changing the definition of what peak oil actually means, therefore the entire concept of oil production peaking is rubbish. Far from a valid criticism however, this is actually a scientific virtue. […]

Why oil decline could get ugly again

Still drilling at four-decade highs, the U.S. oil industry could help drive another price collapse in crude this spring. OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri told a conference this past weekend that the cartel’s policy has hurt the U.S. shale oil industry and triggered a global reduction in capital spending that could ultimately lead to […]

Most Americans Favor Invading Syria and Iraq

According to the Brookings Institution, only the economy is of more concern to Americans than the Islamic State. It cites a Quinnipiac University poll released last week showing nearly 70 percent of respondents believe the Islamic States poses a direct threat to the United States. “As economic worries gradually subside, concern about terrorism is on […]

Russia to start supplying natural gas to China in 4-6 years

Gazprom, Russia’s largest state enterprise and the world’s leading natural gas supplier, will begin supplying natural gas to China in four to six years, said Andrey Kruglove, the company’s chief financial officer, according to the Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald. The supply is based on an agreement signed by Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp […]

8 ways you are killing the environment that you probably didn’t even realize

You know an invention has its drawbacks when even the guy who invented it says he’s sorry he did so. That would be John Sylvan, inventor of the easy-to-use Keurig coffee maker — an invention deemed “the most wasteful form of coffee” on the planet. Sylan says he regrets the creation largely due to its […]

Our privacy pledge. US Declares Venezuela A Threat, Sanctions Top Officials

The United States on Monday declared Venezuela a national security threat and ordered sanctions against seven officials in the worst diplomatic dispute with the oil-rich country since socialist President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013. President Barack Obama issued and signed the executive order, which senior administration officials said did not target the energy sector […]

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